


Trouble at Home

by aravenwood



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Protective John, Rodney McKay Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-23 05:10:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12499492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aravenwood/pseuds/aravenwood
Summary: While on Earth, John and Rodney find themselves held at knifepoint.





	Trouble at Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Doctor_Whom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doctor_Whom/gifts).



> Hi, I wrote this as part of the whump fic exchange over on tumblr. Admittedly, this started off as a totally different fic but the more I worked on it the more it changed into this.

It was safe to say that Rodney was pissed. He’d spent the better part of five years in another galaxy being shot at, tortured, drowned and fed on by monsters he sometimes barely believed in. Five years and he’d survived that with just a few scars. So of course he would die on the street in the middle of the night. Of course, what was he expecting – a heroic death?

The guy holding a knife to his jugular pulled on his hair and laughed. Ran a finger down his cheek, then his jaw, then his neck, and laughed at the responding wince. Across the alleyway, John fought to escape his own captor – a mountain of a man with a squint nose like he got punched in the face a lot. “Don’t touch him, you bastard!” he snarled, and there was so little humour and so much desperation in his voice that he didn’t even sound like Major-turned-Lieutenant-Colonel Sheppard, who’d saved him so many times he’d lost count. Back on Earth with no gun and no knife and no marines to back him up, John was just John, a guy watching his best friend being threatened with death.

Rodney’s captor laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh – was the laugh of someone who liked to torture people, of someone who’d burned ants with a magnifying glass as a child. When he’d been in prison – there was no way Rodney was accepting that a guy like this hadn’t spent a few months behind bars – he probably tied prisoners down in the hot sun and tried to burn them in the same way.

“You ain’t gonna do much from over there! I can do what I want, see.” And to prove his point, the man twisted Rodney around and slammed him hard against the brick wall, then pulled the knife away and started choking him. Thick fingers, rough with callouses, squeezed tighter and tighter and all the while McKay thrashed, trying to knock the hand away. His struggles didn’t even get a reaction – the man wasn’t even looking at him but rather over at John, who was growing redder and redder like it was him being strangled.

“Ok I get it, but you’re gonna kill him and then what?” John snapped. He struggled to escape from his own captor but to no avail, so instead he settled for shouting. What he was shouting, McKay didn’t know; the world was muffled and foggy in his ears, like he was drowning and not suffocating. He almost wished that was the case – he’d read that drowning was the most peaceful way to go and suffocating the ugliest; burst blood vessels in eyes, a crushed windpipe, dark bruises around the neck. Not pretty, and not heroic.

Then the hand loosened and he fell freely to his knees, wheezing, clawing at the ground with one hand and clutching his throat in the other. “Hadn’t thought that far ahead, right? Stab first, think later?” he choked out between coughs. Was this what it felt like to swallow sandpaper?

The man – Rodney decided to call him Grabby Hands because he had a serious thing for touching – glared down at him. “Don’t need to think about it if we’re going to kill you both anyway.” And he swung out a foot and caught Rodney full in the stomach, and he collapsed from his knees onto his side, curled up and rocking. Shaking from the intensity of the pain and the inability to breathe. Grabby also had a thing for breathing, namely preventing it.

Through his lashes, Rodney watched John struggle. Watched him thrash around, throw his upper body from side to side in an attempt to get free from the hands holding him. He actually managed to break free for a second but was just as quickly recaptured and thrown down onto his knees, and the hands that were formerly on his shoulders now on the back of his neck and in his hair. John tensed up in the grip and Rodney couldn’t blame him; one fast turn and he’d be on the ground with a snapped neck. Fighting came at a much more serious risk, and Rodney just hoped John wouldn’t do anything stupid.

“Then do it already,” he hissed through his teeth. The words escaped his mouth and he flinched, expecting another kick.

“Where’s the fun in that?” The voice was so close to his ear now. He rolled his head a little to the left and met eyes with Grabby Hands and his knife, the knife inches from his eye.

Not the eye, not the eye, why are people always trying to take his eye? He’d never stopped shaking, and it was worse than ever now; knocking his teeth together and inadvertently nudging his head closer to the knife. At this rate he was going to blind himself before Grabby had the chance to do it.

The one holding John met eyes with him and grinned, teeth bared like an animal to its prey. “Beat them first, lots of people are beaten and robbed in this world, no one will flinch for two more victims,” he sneered. Rodney’s ego called for him to protest; a genius like him would be missed, would become a martyr for a movement to increase police presence and reduce the risk of an attack like this. The realistic part of his brain told him to stop being so ridiculous, that attacks like this would keep happening long after this one, to people even less deserving than them.

He opened his mouth to give a retort but stopped when the point of the knife dug into his cheek until it bled. “Stop it stop it stop it!” he begged and fought to get away, but the knife followed him. “Stop!” And he kicked out with one leg and caught Grabby in the shin, stunning him enough for him to worm out from under the knife. Surprisingly, he was able to drag himself for a few feet before a foot stomped down on his back and he face-planted the concrete. He felt his nose crunch and screamed through the pain. It was broken, it had to be broken, noses didn’t make noises like that unless they were broken.

The foot holding him down kicked him in the side a few times, forcing him onto his back. Grabby loomed over him, favouring one foot. “ _Don’t_ do that again,” he growled, “or you’ll make it worse for yourself.” To emphasise his point, he brought his foot down on Rodney’s neck and applied just enough pressure that he was once more unable to breathe. Seriously, why couldn’t they just let him do that? Was it too much to ask for to be allowed that bodily function? At least the foot didn’t linger there for too long, he supposed as he once more gasped for air. There were dark spots in his vision that weren’t going away no matter how hard he blinked, so he closed his eyes.

“Rodney, stay awake! Come on, don’t pass out now!” John shouted at him. He wanted to argue that he hadn’t intended on sleeping and how the hell was _anyone_ supposed to sleep in a situation like this, but even that felt like too much work. The hand that wrapped around his jaw and shook his head from side to side wasn’t enough to even make him open his eyes, nor was the return of the knife, not cutting this time but reminding him that his life could end at any time.

“Looks like we’ve broken him. Lasted longer than I expected. Best finish him off and then get to this one,” said Grabby and then a sharp pain appeared in Rodney’s side. He choked out a gasp, barely audible over the screams that filled his ears. Where was it coming from? Not him, he didn’t have enough air to scream.

His side was wet like his face. Wet with what – blood? Knife, there was a knife and it felt like it was still there in his side. He’d been stabbed? He’d been stabbed!

He barely felt the knife being removed from his side, barely heard the chuckles from their attackers, barely heard John breaking free from his captor and attacking both men bare handed. All he really knew was that one second he was alone, floating in the pain, and the next John was there, slapping his cheek until he opened his eyes and then shoving both hands against the stab wound.

“Hey, buddy. Another papercut, huh? You really need to stop letting people cut you, it’s becoming a habit,” Sheppard said and offered him a shaky smile.

Rodney shrugged weakly. “Then they need to stop coming near me with knives,” he whispered. “It hurt a lot more last time,” he added after a bit of hesitation.

John pressed even harder and Rodney couldn’t stop a few whimpers, even though he wasn’t sure why if he could barely feel it. That was something that should be alarming, he told himself but it really wasn’t.

“I think you’re in shock,” John said with a whiff of concern. He lifted one hand from McKay’s shoulder and touched his face. “You’re going to be fine, I promise. You’ve been hurt like this before, you survived it then and you’re going to survive now. Seriously, McKay, you die here and I swear I’ll bring you back to kill you again.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” McKay muttered. He was drifting, something he could blame the shock on, but having something to blame didn’t help anything. He didn’t _need_ it to help anything – no one needed anything when they were on the verge of consciousness, except maybe a comfy blanket and to be left alone.

He tried to sleep, but John slapped him hard. Tried to sleep again while John was talking to someone but again, a slap. Every time he tried to drift off, he was firmly shaken awake and threatened, and if he wasn’t so tired he would’ve punched John.

Suddenly, there was someone touching him. Someone touching his neck, then his wrist, then pulling up his shirt to expose the wound. Then something covered his nose and mouth and someone was lifting him and he was moving. He fell asleep before he could figure out what was going on.

John sat at Rodney’s bedside, leg bouncing as he tried to focus on his book. No permanent damage, they said, but it was hard to believe looking at him now. Broken ribs and nose, minor concussion, some stitches in his face, and then the stab wound. It hadn’t hit any organs, something of a miracle, and their biggest concern had been the blood loss. That was fixed, and they were monitoring him, but that was just a precaution. He was expected to wake up soon.

The past few hours kept playing on repeat in John’s head; the attack, holding Rodney as he struggled to stay awake, the ride in the ambulance with the paramedics trying to stabilise him. Then the flinches throughout the examination, the ones he hadn’t seen but had been told about by a nurse, the ones he was never going to stop imagining. All that brutality…there was bound to be some mental scarring. Even more than there already was.

He touched Rodney’s arm and thank god, no flinch. Too out of it to flinch. There would be one later.

“You did good, buddy. Brave and strong and calm…I hardly believed it was you. You need to show me that side more often.” He paused. “Nah, that was mean. I mean it though, you did good. All you’ve got to do is wake up and complain about how awful it was that you got it all and I just got a glorified hug. Makes a change though, huh? Need to do it more often.”

McKay moaned weakly. “Never. Again,” he slurred.

John smirked. “Here’s hoping, buddy. Fingers crossed.” And he smiled at McKay as he fell asleep once more.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, I hope you liked it!


End file.
